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Public Objectives
[1 VP] I now spend 3 Command Counters from my Command and/or Strategy Allocation areas.: L1z1x, Creuss, Naalu, Muaat, Jol-Nar
[1 VP] I am blockading an opponent's Space Dock.: Jol-Nar, Muaat, L1z1x
[1 VP] I control planets with a total influence greater than the player to my immediate right and greater than the player to my immediate left.: Creuss, Yin, Jol-Nar
[1 VP] I control Mecatol Rex.: Creuss
[1 VP] I successfully invaded one planet containing at least 1 opposing Ground Force this turn.: Jol-Nar, L1z1x, Muaat
[1 VP] I now spend 4 Trade Goods, 3 resources, and 3 influence.
[2 VP] I have 5 Technology Advances of the same color.: Jol-Nar, L1z1x
[2 VP] I successfully invaded two planets, each containing at least 1 opposing Ground Force, this turn.: Creuss, Muaat
[2 VP] I won two space battles this round in different systems and against at least 3 enemy ships.:
2 Stage II Objectives remain hidden.

Secret ObjectivesUniversities of Jol-Nar: 1 Secret ObjectiveThe Naalu Collective: 1 Secret ObjectiveThe L1z1x Mindnet: [2 VP] Threatening: I control systems adjacent to 2 different player's Home Systems.The Ghosts of Creuss: [2 VP] Master of Ships: I control Mecatol Rex, I have a Space Dock here, and at least 8 (non-Fighter) ships in the Mecatol Rex system.The Embers of Muaat: [2 VP] Conqueror: I control all the planets in another player’s Home System.The Yin Brotherhood: 2 Secret Objectives

Special Objectives
Corrupt Empire - The first player to attack Jol-Nar in Space Combat or Invasion Combat will gain 1 VP.: L1z1x

Teams may now claim up to one Public and one Secret Objective. Once all players have claimed or declined, I will send out Action Card draws and teams will be able to allocate gained Command Counters. If a team reaches 9 VP, then only players above them in order of play may continue to claim objectives: otherwise, the team that reaches 9 VP first will be declared the winner!

Cool game, though I guess I was not that much involved. I did give a lot of advice behind the scenes. I didn't want to do too much to mess up the game after only falling in in round 4 or 5. I'm looking forward to playing a game from the start, some time.

I failed to take notes through the full game, so I can't remember all the actions where further recommendations could be taken. But if there's anything about this game I can answer, I'll try my best to do so.

Jol-Nar, Naalu, and Yin all got really shafted by the board creation, with few systems to share between the three players and a large gap of empty systems separating them from the other players on the lower half of the board. I remember that stever777 made an odd placement during board creation, placing the Ashtroth-Abaddon-Loki system between himself and L1z1x instead of directly in front of his home system towards Mecatol Rex.

Creuss could have won on Round 7 if they took Bureaucracy instead of Warfare II, since Imperium Rex was the third card in the Stage II section of the Objective Deck. They also had an approximately coin-flip chance (can't remember if it was 45% or 55%) to win the Corrupt Empire VP, which would have also given them the win this round.

I'll probably run another Twilight Imperium game after a bit of a break, but I'm planning on introducing some house rules for it rather than just running it straight. Right now, I've already planned to thin out the Action and Political card decks from 170 to 120, and 110 to 60, respectively. I'm also thinking of using the alternate Bureaucracy and Public Objective rules and alternate technology tree from the house rules that MrBody linked a while back. Beyond that, I'm not exactly sure what I'll change - maybe some sort of alternate galaxy creation rules, almost certainly going to change how Mechanized Units interact with objectives. If there are any other suggestions, I'm happy to hear them.

Thanks for playing, all!

EDIT: Actually Fidoh, since Creuss claimed more objectives than L1z1x, I believe that puts you in 3rd place, not 2nd based on tiebreakers...

I read about a method where the starting spots and race are not set and after the game board is built races and starting spots are selected (from a pre selected 6 races) in an order from first to last then last to first with selecting either race or starting location so the last player picks both at the same time.

Yeah I really should have attacked cruess not yin, left it all up to chance late in the game.

He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!

A bunch of the house rules we play with are behind this link. Some of them:

- Bureaucracy: Active player draws 3 public objectives. One is revealed, one is put on top of the deck, one is put on the bottom of the deck. Gives the player with Bureaucracy some more control.

- Each player receives 2 Secret Objectives. During the first status phase, each player discards 1 Secret Objective face down. Combined with the Artifact optional rules the game should go to 10 VP’s.

- The additional cost of a Racial Technology is reduced by the amount of Victory Points a player possesses, to a minimum of 0 resources

- Some changes to races.

- Just before refreshing planets in the Status Phase, all players may spend unused resources or influence to gain Trade Goods. For every 2 resources or influence spent, gain 1 Trade Good.

- During production, [one Ground Force and one Fighter] may be produced for one resource.

- The base cost of Dreadnoughts is changed to 4.

- Ground forces are not upgraded to shock troops after rolling a natural 10 in combat. Instead, after a succesful invasion combat, upgrade one ground force to a shock troop. Shock troops do not automatically capture facilities. Before the first round of invasion combat, an attacker may assign any number of shock troops as commandos. Commandos do not participate in combat, but capture one facility each after a succesful invasion and establish control of the planet if all other forces are destroyed. Commandos are destroyed after a failed invasion.

- Some technologies and action cards are changed. For example Rare Mineral is changed to "after invading a planet", instead of "after invading a neutral planet". Things like that.

- Hylar V Assault Laser, Automated Defense Turrets, Assault Cannon, Graviton Laser System, and Deep Space Cannon are considered different types of weaponry. Only one of these tech may be applied to each die-roll.

Also, I think we should play with artifacts. These are soft points on certain planets. We always have 3 around Mecatol Rex and one on Mallice, I think. Or maybe all the planets around MR have a neutral artifact marker, which is flipped once a player moves there, and it might be an artifact worth 1VP or 2 trade goods, or something like that. Sometimes artifacts also have a color and are counted as discounts on technology purchases.

When a player no longer controls an artifact, he loses the VP. Using artifacts makes the game much more dynamic and exciting, I think.

"Arch Chancellor? We just got a signal from Mecatol Rex. It's over, sir. They're parading to the palace now. We've been told to expect a 'disarmament and reparations consultant' within the week."

"Ah. Well, thank you young... errr... youngster. I expect you'll want to be returning to your family soon, but I wonder if I might ask you a favour first."

"Of course, Arch Chancellor."

"There's a terran down in the mathematics department. Working on some new predictive algorithms. Tell him -- tell Hari Seldon that the Arch Chancellor has greenlit the Foundation Initiative."

Thanks for playing, everyone. Congrats on your victory, Void Slayer. Super-thanks to MrB for running this and to Caliber for being a great partner.

Jol Nar was in trouble from the get-go with our poor planets and a Secret Objective that required us to blow up two enemy space docks in the same round(!). We did our best, though, and if we hadn't suffered that crushing defeat at Quann we'd have had an excellent chance for 4VPs this round.

Thanks for running a great game! I agree the upper portion of the board did get kinda shafted in terms of starting systems; I remember during placement me and Grimmy were looking at our crummy systems and put one next to someone (Muatt, maybe?) in the hopes that someone else would be forced to place a nice system next to us. Instead we got the Lucky Lady. >_< Plus, the nebula next to Rex was of course directly in our way, making us the side the furthest from Rex. Didn't really cripple us, but it did mean we never seriously pursued any objectives pertaining to Mecatol.

Our secret objective was Secret Objective: [2 VP] Regulator: I destroyed Space Docks controlled by two different players this turn, which, just, dang. It didn't help that our nearest two sides didn't really branch out too much, and when we finally had a chance to try for this we were A) blocked by a Peace Ministry declaration and B) completely boned on rolls. I think if we had won that fight with Muatt we may have taken the game (we could have stealth shipped to Naalu's dock) but once Muatt put our forces down we had no chance left. Ah well.

I dunno about what home rules should/could be implemented, but I'd be willing to try some out. I've always been intruged with some of the optional rules in the book, like artifacts, or mercenaries, or heroes, but in meatspace I almost always have a few newbies whenever I get to play this and try to keep the game as simple as possible for them.

I think that overall L1z1x did pretty well. We had a decent starting position and a Secret Objective that played to our strengths. Unfortunately, we also made a few missteps that really put us on the back foot for the second half of the game:

We completely dropped the ball in our initial invasion of A-A-L. After wiping out the Naalu fleet there, we proceeded to deploy our Ground Forces in a sufficiently sub-optimal manner that we failed to capture a single planet.
Later, we got a little ahead of ourselves and attacked the Creuss at Lodor with 3 dreadnoughts, when we probably should have waited a little longer to marshall some more forces.

Still, I can’t complain too much, especially since we had a pretty good final turn that let us snatch up 3 VP right before the end.

I sincerely thank everyone for sticking it over the last 7 months(!) – the last time I played a game of TI via pbp, it fell apart about halfway through. It was great to see this all the way to end.

Wow huge props to MrB for keeping this thing running smoothly this long, knew it had been awhile but 7 months, where does the time go.

Funny to know that I could have sneaked out an earlier Imperium Rex victory-will have to go back and see what I was thinking that turn. I know one turn I took warfare and didn't really get much out of it, by the time I wanted to the shape of the board had changed a bit I think.

The last turn was a bit of a mess for me in that I had initially given up on pulling off a win, then realized I actually had a chance of pulling off the corrupt empire card and the TG from l1x1z (which I wasn't expecting) would give me a chance. Wasted minister of peace previous to realizing this and playing for 2nd essentially. Corrupt Empire is rough as you need enough influence to place it on the right person and then you need to make sure no one else has a chance to take it before your turn comes around again. Don't think it was until the last turn that I got action cards that I could have used as a delay. Good game all around and mostly a fluke play by Jol-Nar that kept Muaat from taking the Yin homeworld instead of mine-would have put me much farther behind.

My thanks to MrBody and Stever777 as well for sticking in throughout the game even with the rough starting position and then falling behind early. I could imagine that being frustrating for a game that takes this much time, so hope you still had as much fun as I did (scheming for one gas-filled nation).

This was the first time I tried resisting the allure of technology and sticking to a destroyer heavy game, was fun and didn't really feel outmatched. Though I'll add that after going the whole game with all my ships having a range of 2 I don't know how you could go back, range 1 ships just seem like you can't pull off much.

I remember that stever777 made an odd placement during board creation, placing the Ashtroth-Abaddon-Loki system between himself and L1z1x instead of directly in front of his home system towards Mecatol Rex.

Yeah, I think I was trying to make my Home System less of an inviting target, putting Loki further away.
Of course, that also put my HS in less of a valuable position...

Secret Objective: [2 VP] Expansionist: I control 8 systems outside of my Home System. I "control" a system if I have at least one (non-Fighter) ship there, and I control every planet in the system.